Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic: Perspectives from the Barents Area

114

Adaptation Actions for a Changing Arctic: Perspectives from the Barents Area

5.2.4.1 Climate scenarios vs. socio-economic scenarios Scenarios based on climate change only (under current or desired emission trends) are most typical at the national level, often to serve as general information to national decision- makers and sometimes to support transitions to a desired future (through emission regulations etc.). Scenarios based on climate change are also used by specific sectors and municipal planning processes, where the main interest concerns avoiding climate- or weather-related risks, such as in the placement of structures (to adapt to increased avalanche risks or sea- level rise) or dimensioning drainage pipes to handle increased surface water flow. In cases where climate-related factors are the main challenge the current level of detail in climate scenarios gives sufficient input to develop solutions. While climate scenarios provide a fair amount of agreement about future development, socio-economic scenarios are often very place-dependent, as well as linked to issues that are context-specific. Linking climate scenarios to socio-economic trends or to a variety of socio-economic scenarios has therefore been most typical at the sector, municipal, or regional level. Visions regarding economic development in the Barents area vary across the different scenarios: ranging from ‘ideals’ of shipping and tourism blooming with the opening of the Northern Sea Route, to a focus on lacking infrastructure, costs and competition. Some smaller municipalities have highlighted ageing populations and out-migration, while others have focused on new opportunities in agriculture, mining, fishing or other activities. Much depended on local entrepreneurship, and the involvement of the municipal/sectoral institutions in identifying vulnerability,adaptive capacity and future potentials. Research-project based scenarios may include analyses of climate and mitigation options (e.g., ‘Framtidens byer’ [cities of the future]), climate scenarios only (e.g., CIVILCLIM, Rambøll Management Consulting, 2015) or both climate and socio-economic scenarios (e.g., Groven et al., 2008; AREALCLIM, CAVIAR 2009; NORADAPT, 2011). Only a few multidisciplinary projects have coupled climate and socio-economic scenarios in ways that combine top-down and bottom-up knowledge input (e.g., NORADAPT, 2011). The combination of climate and social scenarios in Norway indicates that local climate vulnerability is often a product of natural-, socio-economic and institutional vulnerability. Increased focus on combining detailed climate scenarios with socio-economic scenarios is therefore important for supporting decision-making and local adaptation action. 5.2.4.2 Scale effects on methodology Development of nationally-initiated scenarios, often financed through national climate change adaptation programs, includes various mixes of scientists, policy-makers and industry. Such scenarios typically involve large infrastructures with the capacity to execute sophisticated modeling, especially using climate models. Typical examples are national reports on climate change and impact from the Nordic countries,produced since the early 2000s and involving scientists and national meteorological institutes.Regional (such as is typical for Russia) and sectoral-level scenarios differ widely in scope and scale,

depending on the purpose of the scenario and the regionally contingent variables. They often depend on climate scenarios built at national level for baseline input.While tailored to local or specific sectoral conditions and needs, sectoral scenarios tend to be strongly influenced by national or even global events. The regionally contingent variables make comparisons and generalizations from national to regional level difficult. There is thus a need to develop scenarios at the regional scale, which could informwork at themunicipal level.Municipal scenarios are evenmore locally relevant,but also less transferable than regional scenarios.They are alsomore challenging to systematicallydevelop because of the large number of municipalities and resource limitations.Sector-initiated scenarios often have amore narrowly defined purpose, such as improving yield or mapping risk. 5.2.4.3 User participation There is a clear trend over time from focusing only on climate to increasingly addressing impacts, and in recent years also recognizing the importance of including multiple actors, disciplines and perspectives in the scenario process. User participation was typically found at the lower scales of governance: local and municipal, while national and regional level scenarios typically included less local actor inputs. That local engagement can encourage inclusion of local values is, for example, reflected in the CLIM-atic project with comments such as“ the snow-scooter season will be shorter ”(Abbing, 2009). It is increasingly understood that climate change will have extensive impacts on all sectors of society, sometimes as a consequence of highly complex chains of causal relationships and interdependencies. This has accentuated the need for a broader range of expertise including more extensive user involvement to ensure inclusion of practitioners’ expertise. 5.3 Bringing in local and regional voices In climate research there has often been a‘disconnect’ between the experts who use models to better understand climate change and its direct impacts and the practitioners who need to deal with expected changes in their everyday planning (Pilli- Sihvola et al., 2015). With a need to better handle real world problems, improved communication across the science/policy/ practitioner communities becomes essential (e.g., Pohl, 2011; see also Chapter 3). One way to better connect practitioners and experts and so create a mutual understanding of what is needed in terms of adaptation action is to use participatory methods that bring local and regional voices into the process of constructing scenarios. Such approaches also provide a way to take into account the complex local or regional social context,wheremany factors other than climatemay be perceived as critically important (Hovelsrud and Smit, 2010; IPCC, 2014).Many non-climate factors are also changing, partly because of global processes but also because of specific local and regional dynamics. In a time perspective of the next 30 to 50 years, the uncertainties related to societal factorsmay in fact be greater than any uncertainties related to the direct impacts of climate change. Assessing these uncertainties requires a great range of expertise, and the assessment benefits from knowledge about each specific local context.